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Consequences

Oh those silly Mormons, first it was Joseph Smith with a magic rock hunting (quite unsuccessfully) for buried treasure, then it was special holy underwear, now it’s all about baptism for the dead. What will they think of next?

Truly, Mormonism is on the cutting edge of religious-zaniness.

But I kid, I kid. It’s not like the other religions are any less ridiculous.

The whole baptism for the dead thing has been a feature of religious news for a few years now. The Church of Latter Day Saints has posthumously baptized all sorts of people over the years from all walks of life. You’ve got your Gandhis, your Anne Franks, and of course, Obama’s mother. I think they could take it a step further, you know, really step their game up and offer repentance to some truly weird figures from history. Maybe George Washington or Napoleon would fit right into the Mormon afterlife. Why not Genghis Khan? I mean, everyone deserves a second chance, right?

Watch out though, that stuff is bound to have consequences.

On a more serious note, the whole idea of baptizing folks that died either with the “wrong” religion or without access or knowledge to the “correct” religion is completely offensive to people outside the Mormon Church. It presumes that these individuals lived incorrectly or made the wrong choices in life and denigrates the memory of the lives they lived. Furthermore, (and this is an issue I take with all religions that propose some kind of hard and fast rules for admittance to an after life) the belief that it takes one hearing of and believing in the religion of Joseph Smith to get into the nice part of the afterlife means that God didn’t see it as necessary to offer up this “correct” religion until around two hundred years ago. Now, theoretically, every spirit that passes on ends up mucking about in some kind of shitty purgatory for thousands of years until Joseph Smith’s followers can get around to praying for them. But, since we don’t really know every single person that died everywhere throughout history, it’s impossible that everyone is given the opportunity to choose the Mormons’ “correct” path.

I call bullshit.

Let me be clear, I’m not picking on just Mormonism here, this is an issue with Christianity at large (and other religions with similar ideas) and one that has never been properly explained to me, though I have had many conversations with my family’s priest. It all just seems a little too…short sighted to me to be true.

While the whole concept of posthumous baptism seems silly and wrong to people of other faiths, it’s hard to say that it’s done maliciously. Mormons, like any other religious people, believe that they are right and that your beliefs and your choice of religion have far reaching consequences. We’re talking eternal consequences. Their idea is that they are offering you a choice in that purgatory realm by performing baptisms for the dead. It’s a sweet idea, if a little bit misguided.

All that said, there’s no real reason to get upset about it, it’s more funny than anything else, as is the case with most things in life. They’ve only just started on historical figures, Odin only know where they’ll go next. Maybe fictional characters?

I’d love to see what happens if they baptized Sauron or Harry Potter into heaven.

On second thought, this sounds like a great concept for my new graphic novel…

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Discussion (55) ¬

They already baptized Hitler, just google it. This is why the Jews are so upset for doing baptisms for the dead for holocaust victims. Hitler and the Holocaust victims were sent to the same place in the afterlife.

Ok, I hope I don’t get mocked for this, but since I am LDS, I thought I would put out there a little more info about baptism for the dead and the afterlife as we see it and some other things, for the record. To start, baptism for the dead isn’t an automatic ticket into heaven or anything like that, we believe it is something that needs to happen for someone to progress, but when we baptize someone who is dead, it’s an offer, the person who the work is done for has the choice to accept it or not. That’s one thing I really appreciate about this church is that it is all about agency and free will- we can’t and won’t force anyone to accept the church, but because we believe the work is necessary, we do it when we can so that the option is there. No one is denied the chance to move forward because they never had the chance to be baptized when they were alive. I agree that those who did work without permission were wrong, and please know that they were not authorized by the church to do so and are facing consequences, as far as I know. Also, we believe that those who aren’t baptized when they die and haven’t had work done for them yet aren’t in some “crappy purgatory” but in a spirit world where they can learn. Granted, it is called “spirit prison” but mostly because we believe that they can’t progress until their work is done and because those people who made bad decisions and know they made bad decisions (serial killers, etc.), will not be very happy there. But we believe that God is fair and loves everyone, so He doesn’t punish people for things that they can’t help. I hope that cleared up a few things and feel free to ask me more (respectful, please) questions if you want.

Not trying to be disrespectful, but how can dead people accept or reject an offer? Also, if the person didn’t accept Mormonism while they were alive, why would they do so when they are dead? Also, do you baptize the dead for all countries or is this an American phenomenon?

Like most Christians, Mormons believe that everyone has a spirit — a sort of mental essence — that lives on after the body dies. That spirit, according to Mormon belief, still has free will to accept or reject the baptism and other vicarious ceremonies.

Of course, the whole idea is a little disingenuous, because if one were to get to an afterlife and find it basically being run by the Mormons, it would be kind of obvious what the One True Church is. So the question in that kind of world would be less why would anyone accept it than why wouldn’t anyone.

Mormons perform baptisms for the dead all over the world. For example, the recent baptism of Anne Frank that brought this practice back into the news was performed in the Dominican Republic.

It always struck me as odd because the entire premise seems to explicitly acknowledge that there are people in the afterlife who don’t believe that we’re the one true church. Hell, it seems to acknowledge that one can still be atheist in the afterlife. Confusing shit right there. Whenever I asked about it the responses I got were all basically “Oh well who the fuck knows the specifics of the afterlife? It’s all pretty mysterious.” Well okay then.

The Mormon church doesn’t think it’s some new thing – they think it’s part of the church of Jesus Christ, which goes all the way back to Adam (Jehovah being another name for Jesus). So, lots of people have been baptized all the way along, between apostasies.

As for people who’s descendants won’t ever get them baptized, there’s a 1000-year period of peace coming, where all that will get taken care of.

The idea is that God is perfectly just. Not everyone in this life has the same opportunities in this life. However, everyone needs to accept Jesus, and be baptized, one way or another. Hence the baptism for the dead.

I think it works out much better than the “sucks to be you” doctrines.

If God exists and is perfectly just, there’s no need to be baptized or accept Jesus because a truly merciful God would never send anyone to eternal punishment, hell, etc. Eternal punishment is not just for 80 or so years years of living regardless of sins committed in that lifespan.

Elizabeth: Can I progress to becoming a god in charge of my own planet, populating it with spirit babies from my eternally pregnant wife? I’ve heard that about LDS and it sounds AWESOME. You guys should be promoting that part of your religion. Seriously.

Love the comics. But is not like Mormons created baptism for the dead it is mention in the bible too. And it isn’t like Mormons claim to be the “correct” church. The church merely states that their gospel and believes are a continuation of the gospel J.C established in the old world but for the people of this continent.

Oh come on, every church claims to be the correct church. Those who say they don’t are simply way too high up on their moral high horse to tell the truth. Then again, in my opinion, if every church told the truth, the religious people in the world would be down about 98%.

I guess my biggest scruple during my time being raised in a conservative baptist church. I never quite understood how a god who loves all men equally would choose a single race of people to rule over all the others, or simply be the chosen race. Doesn’t he love us all equally?

Why would anybody convert to Mormonism? With posthumous baptism I can keep on not tithing, sleeping in on Sundays, drinking alcohol and coffee in this life. Once I’m dead I’ll probably be baptized into Mormonism within a couple hundred years. Best of both worlds. The logic of Pascal’s wager makes it pretty clear what the best choice is regarding Mormonism.

The offer is intended for those who did not receive the opportunity to accept Christ into their lives when they were alive. We’d still perform the ritual because how are we supposed to know if missionaries never dropped by your door, but it’s understood that if you specifically denied the faith during life it doesn’t really do anything since you already made you choice.

…funny, for a God that’s supposed to be all-forgiving that sounds like some cold-blooded shit when you say it like that.

I grew up as an apostolic pentecostal and this it’s how I came to understand the change at getting in to heaven. God loves all of his creation and he rules by grace. So those people who have never had the chance to hear about God will be judged by their actions in life. But if you ever had someone invite you to church or try and talk to you about Jesus and you blew them off our decided it was not for you then you’re shit out of luck. Also although baptism is required for a convert it is never too late to repent and give your life to God. As shown when Jesus was on the cross and he asked the criminal hanging beside him if he’s was truly sorry for what he had done. The guy said yes and gained access to heaven.

Raised Mormon, just thought I’d address a couple of the issues. Not because I have any personal attachment to the faith, but just because I have had access to this information.

The apostasy during which the church was not on the earth wasn’t part of any plan god put together. Funny thing about free agency is that sometimes people can just stop following you for a couple thousand years and you just gotta wait until a guy comes along who’s willing and able to be your prophet.

They do believe that they will eventually baptize all the dead. It is understood once we’ve found all the names we can with our current means God will provide the means to find the rest. What that would entail is anybody’s guess, but by the time we get there it’ll be possible.

I do feel that the Mormon afterlife is pretty nice by most standards. It’s divided up into various kingdoms, all part of the three larger kingdoms Celestial, Terestial, and Telestial. They’re all much better than life here on earth, because God loves us and doesn’t wouldn’t want us to downgrade. Apparently he’s also really petty and judgmental though since we can’t get the good shit unless we get baptized, married in the temple (so to another mormon), and probably some other weird rituals. Temple’s got a lot of rooms. Never got around to getting my endowments so I got no real idea what goes on in there. Supposedly when you do they tell you a lot of secret stuff that makes it all make sense but they’re not supposed to talk about it outside the temple and if I cared that much I probably would’ve been endowed.

Oh, that reminds me. You always hear about the baptisms for the dead. You never hear about the marriages for the dead. We totally do that too. A married couple will go through whatever our marriage ritual is (once again never got that far) on behalf of a dead couple so they can be married in heaven. I’d think that would be a lot scarier to some people than just waking up as a member of another faith.

None of this of course addresses your larger issue that if you didn’t join the church you didn’t live the correct life and as such aren’t deserving of a good afterlife. Or even the matter of having your worth decided by whether or not you’ve partaken in a series of rituals, so it can’t be considered a defense of anything the church does. Just thought I’d clarify a couple points.

Wait wait wait, so its not okay for Mormons to be naive and ignorant in their beliefs and practices, but its totally okay to write a mostly derogatory post about them based on uninformed rumors and speculations? If you’re going to bash a religion, at least do some real research first.

I’ll agree the strip is hilarious, even to a practicing Mormon, but seriously, you’re accusing a church of alot of holes in their doctrine simply because you haven’t taken the time to understand it. Everything in the post has an answer (and one that actually makes sense). So don’t hate on any religion just cuz it seeeeeems absurd and nonsensical to you.

It’s a school of worship based around a series of amendments to a particular interpretation of a collection of stories about the European god of the dark ages. Guy wasn’t even being hateful as far as I can tell. Critical for sure, but I think you might just need to develop some thicker skin. Not everyone’s gonna treat the church seriously. Doesn’t mean they’re not allowed to talk about us when we’re on the news.

I didn’t say Guy was being hateful, I said he was “hating on”, implying that he was berating and making negative statements such as “I call bullshit.”
As far as thicker skin goes, if I didn’t have thick skin I’d be on every anti-Mormon’s case about tiny little things. I’m not annoyed by negative views of my religion, I’m annoyed by the hypocrisy of the claim of Mormons’ ignorance purely coming from the ignorance of the one making the claim. Especially in this case from someone who wants to appear like they’re well-read in multiple cultures and beliefs.

Scott, this actually brings up a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now. As far as you can tell, from everything you’ve read, how old or new is the idea that one’s religion is the Single, Correct Belief? From what I’ve read, I’ve gotten the feeling that before monotheism, there wasn’t such a strong sentiment of “YOU ARE BELIEVING IN THE WRONG THINGS AND WE ARE BELIEVING IN THE RIGHT THINGS,” the way it’s such a staple of Christianity and Islam.

From what I understand, that was kind of a political thing. Just about everyone at that time believed in multiple gods, it was common practice and believing in one was pretty odd. Everyone was allowed to worship the gods from their native land, as long as they also accepted the gods of the Empire (I’m thinking of Greek/Roman times right now). If you refused to worship the god that was seen to protect the Empire, especially during special religious times, then that was seen as a political act, not a religious one, since “everyone knew” there were multiple gods, so there would be no reason to not worship.
This is just from the bit I’ve read, so may not be 100% accurate.

To the dude who mentioned Hitler: I heard they baptized Hitler back when I was still an active member of “the church” (they say it like it’s in all-caps: THE church, THE ONE TRUE church). The idea is that baptism is an admission pass to the Afterlife Waiting Room, not to one of the three afterlife kingdoms (which are nothing like the Heaven described by other Christian churches, FWIW). You have to be judged and damned before you get to go to an afterlife, so first you have to wait for God, or Jesus The Brunette White Guy to judge you. Also, while sitting in this waiting room made by God, you will be free to choose whether or not you believe in God, and whether or not you accept that God’s church which got you into the waiting room IS indeed God’s church which got you into the waiting room. And, while sitting there, you might also find yourself wondering why God needs a waiting room, or why exactly God thinks anyone would look him in the face and say, “Why, no, God, I don’t believe your church is your church. Yes, God, please send me to the second heaven with the saggy couches and crappy TV sets, because that’s naturally the choice I would make, and not the choice where I get to rule over my own planets.”

One might even wonder why one needs a pass to get into the waiting room. Or, for that matter, why there is a waiting room at all. God can spy on all of us all the time and knows all our thoughts, but he needs to stick us in a queue to give himself time to decide which hell we belong in? He must be toying with us, because, being the best spy in the universe, he already knows us better than we do and already knows what hell we belong in.

I wonder: If all the Mormons revolted and never finished baptizing former ruthless dictators and dead eight year olds and then the world ended, would God not bother to put the leftover people in a waiting room? What would God do with the leftovers who never got baptized, exactly? Toss them into Outer Darkness and let the space sharks eat them? Why would God make the eternal fate of his supposedly precious children dependent on less that 1% of the current population dunking themselves in fonts repeatedly? Mathematically-speaking, they’d have to be doing it full time for centuries to even make a small dent in the massive pile of dead and gones who don’t have their pass yet. One would think God would rather have that 1% spending their time, say, feeding the poor or healing the sick or in some way being the tiniest bit like Jesus.

Back when I was a member, we spent an insane number of hours memorizing passages from The Book of Some Guy Named Mormon, A Jew Who Doesn’t Act Like a Jew, of doing mindless busy work, of sitting in pews silencing noisy children and listening to the same talks given last week, of going to temples and baptizing dead people in fonts held by giant golden oxen (I could die from the irony of that), of pretending to be married on behalf of the same dead people…and we spent almost no time in soup kitchens, or on the streets with the homeless, or actively working with non-profits in the community, or raising funds for charities, or giving our money to those in need rather than to the church (just try following the paper trail for their donations to make sure the money isn’t embezzled or used to line wealthy pockets — just try). We spent almost no time trying to be like Jesus, and all our time trying to be like the mythological Pharisees (sp?) we spent so much time criticizing.

Note: I made up space sharks, but I didn’t make up Outer Darkness, which is a big empty nothing they threaten you with to keep you going to church. OD is like locking your kid in the closet and letting them scream and scream and scream and never letting them out, no matter how much they beg you to do so. That’s what happens to you if you tell God to go shove his one true religion where his heart ought to be — you get abandoned like an abused child locked in a closet. But, presumably, you deserve it.

I was going to say that it seems absurd to think anyone would deliberately choose Outer Darkness, especially by saying something like, “God, your church that you just said is real isn’t real,” because God has clearly rigged the game to force anyone with a brain to do whatever he says in order to get into the Celestially Shiny Best After-Life Where You Can Make Your Own Planets. But in writing out what I just wrote, about abused children locked in closets, I suddenly realized that if I died and that was the choice God presented to me, I’d say, “Yes, please send me to Outer Darkness, because personally, I think only heartless scumbags are going to make it through your bizarre, manipulative filter into the Shiny Celestial, and I’d rather be alone for eternity than spend a single minute around those assholes or their asshole maker.”

No wonder you’re not an “active member” because you definitely don’t understand anything about Mormon doctrine concerning life past death. It sounds like you basically learned to regurgitate buzz words and phrases from Sunday school without really grasping what’s going on.

Feel free to enlighten the naive gentiles, Kenny. Feel free to “correct” anything God told you I got wrong, and teach the ignorant masses all about the real Mormon afterlife. You keep insisting everyone here is wrong, wrong, wrong, so why not tell all of them what is right, right, right?

Technically everyone gets into heaven eventually in Mormonism (except for Cain, jeudas maybe? dunno I’m not the one in charge of Hevean Entry Approval). It’s just which parking space you get to have that the Baptism pass get you?

Why are you still reading this far in?

ugh, zealots come in every ideological flavor.
the zealots who inconsiderately proxy baptize lists of Holocaust survivors.
zealots who proxy baptize famous people they are not descended from.
the zealot who baptized my ancestors without asking my family first or so much as an email/snailmail. :[

“Have the Presbyterians any truth? Yes. Have the Baptists, Methodists, &c, any truth? Yes. They all have a little truth mixed with error. We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true ‘Mormons’” (History of the Church, 5:517). –via ‘Ask A Mormon Girl’ blog http://askmormongirl.wordpress.com/2012/09/10/

Welp, my 15 min. break is up. Back to the ol’ Cookie Factory in the Clouds. Maybe if I work harder Saddam will give me that bonus I’ve wanted to buy a life with!

I’m new to Happle Tea so I’m a little late on posting but still felt I needed to. I’m a Mormon and lived in Utah all my life and I found this comic HILARIOUS. It’s great humor and satire like this that helps keep things in perspective and reminds us that all religious teachings should be taken with a grain of salt.